Just Shut the Fucking Oil Companies Alfuckingready
Biden could save the planet by abusing his presidential power as he's now allowed to do
Y’know who wouldn’t hesitate to shut down oil companies if he understood or cared that they’re strengthening storms, expanding deserts, raising temperatures, elevating seas, broiling people to death, burning America’s forests, drying up American water sources, melting the ice caps, destroying American coastal communities, inspiring migration, decimating marine populations, warping ecospheres, extincting species, creating new animal travel patterns, and cooking new pandemics?
Put it this way. If oil had a face and Mexican parents and if oil lusted after Donald Trump’s daughter the way, uh, he does, Trump would punish oil for destroying our planet the way he’s going to punish immigrants for boosting our economy and lowering our crime rate.
On day one of his presidency, Joe Biden should have thrown everything he had and some shit he didn’t have at the oil companies. He should have abused his power as if he were Diddy². He should have tested the limits of executive authority — which either would have got the Supreme Court on record declaring that presidents actually aren’t Jesus or would have fucking worked.
Executive orders. Raids on refineries. Mass arrests. Changing the “C” in C-suite to “Correctional.” All of it.
Public Citizen and other activists months ago begged the Justice Department of Attorney Merrick “Speedy Gonzarland” to investigate oil companies for destroying their homes and/or loved ones. Why must we ask for such things?
And don’t try with the protecting-the-workers bullshit. Repossessing just one fiscal quarter’s worth of earnings ill-gotten gains from the monstrous legal fictions known as oil companies and distributing it to said workers would let all their blue-collar employees retire comfortably tomorrow. Besides, oil’s already firing people, so their unemployment is just a matter of time.
Would all of it work if Biden went beserker mode? No and yes.
Sure, courts would’ve thrown out some of it. Some would get stuck in legal battles.
But it would have worked in the sense that fighting climate would now be the number-one news story not counting Diddy. People would have seen that a fight was at least happening — which is a necessary precondition for victory! The reason people are dispirited about climate is because there’s no fight and no one to root for.
Biden violating norms and comity and bonhomie would have expanded the parameters within which we debate “What are reasonable measures for saving the planet for the babies we’re forcing women to have?”
And Biden could still do much of this in his final month. Not only would it put climate change, global warming, Earthicide, whatever you wanna call it, back on the metaphorical front pages, it would chaos the fuck out of the chaos Trump is planning to chaos the shit out of.
Now, you might reasonably say, where the fuck were you four years ago, Fucking News? Fair. So, (a) TFN was on hiatus while I was working at TYT, and, more importantly, (b) corporate media and (most) lawmakers don’t listen to The Fucking News1.
And the outlets that do get listened to haven’t made this a crusade. They should.
And there are champions out there, already.
Activist Bill McKibben bangs this drum louder than virtually any other drum-banger and wins some really important victories along the way. Naomi Klein could write a book about corporate climate evil-doing and has.
Grist is an entire news outlet dedicated to breaking stories and elucidating policy about climate.
We have champions and advocates outside the system. What we/Earth don’t have is a Fox driving the system.
One reason TFN hasn’t been a Fox on climate change is the paradox around being a Fox on anything. You can adopt Fox tactics all you want but without an audience, no one cares and those tactics don’t work. And it’s virtually impossible to gain that audience while practicing Fox tactics.
But — you astute, critically reasoning Newsfuckers will astutely ask — then how the fuck did we get a Fox?
Sidebar!
Fox had billionaire money from the get-go. They bought a platform. And it had all the time in the world to find its audience because, again, billionaire money.
All they needed was good tactics. Which they had.
The tactics, I should note, are very simple — but very difficult for corporate media to do.
First: Counterprogram; choose subject matter ignored by others.
Second: Iterate; hammer your stories in different forms such as lawmaker interviews dayside and opinion/debates in prime.
Third: Repeat ad nauseam.
Steps two and three are what I like to call perverse obsession. Focus on something so intensely and prolongedly that people notice and think you’re weird. And laugh at you. That’s how Fox won.
I was in corporate-media control rooms when Fox launched. They were laughed at. Only Fox understood this as a feature, not a bug.
Because if you can withstand the laughter, eventually they get bored with laughing at you. And they notice that it’s working. And they decide they should start talking about at least some of what you’re talking about.
Fast forward 20 years and it’s Fox’s world and who’s laughing now?
The insane thing is there are people today who know all of this and already have the platforms to make this a crusade and aren’t doing it.
And they make the same excuses I make, only less justifiably. The argument — a fair and correct one — is that it’s hard to get good ratings with climate content.
Okay, but, uh, how are those ratings doing now with whatever it is you’re doing?
Because — trade secret — most of ratings-chasing is built on the (false) premise that you should talk about what everyone’s already talking about. That way people will tune in.
This is actually more effective for defending your coverage choices to your bosses than it is for drawing new viewers.
There’s another way to get ratings that virtually no one thinks about: Get your existing viewers to watch longer. And to evangelize on your behalf.
But the only way to turn your viewers into crusaders is to imbue your programming with moral purpose. And the only way to do that is to risk — or appear to risk — your commercial goals in favor of your moral ones.
Which is exactly what focusing on climate change would do, precisely because everyone “knows” it’s ratings death. Just the way everyone “knew” Fox’s subject matter was ratings death. Which it was…until it wasn’t.
Only when viewers see that sacrifice, the willingness to tank your own ratings, do they put on their battle armor for your cause. First the show you’re doing and then the cause your show is fighting for.
That’s why TFN can’t do it alone2. Yes, TFN is willing to call out enemies. Yes, TFN could focus on climate change with perverse obsession. But it wouldn’t work because there’s no sacrifice to inspire people (Newsfuckers notwithstanding, obvi).
You need to have a pedestal you might lose before people can be moved by your willingness to lose it.
What’s heartbreaking is that this isn’t difficult or even expensive. But Democratic money is terrified of doing it. Or intimidated by the fact that they don’t know how.
But it would literally take just one show.
I know this because I worked on the one show that transformed MSNBC into the closest thing corporate media has to a progressive standard-bearer.
The show was Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Keith was willing to make enemies. Might even have reveled in it, dare I venture.
People — especially the young people advertisers want to reach — are desperate to rally around a rallying point. But if you won’t fight hard enough to make enemies, they’ll see you as compromised from the get-go.
And anti-Trumpism isn’t good enough anymore. People are dying to join up for a fight with a noble outcome and a viable path to victory.
Anyone arguing this isn’t possible is advertising the paucity of their imagination. Argue for your limitations and, sure enough, they’re yours!
If America with far fewer people and crawling out of a recession could marshal an entire new industrial revolution to build tanks and planes and draft ten million people to save Europe and Jews, why the fuck can we not do the same now as an exponentially richer country to save Europe and Jews and the rest of humanity?
Trump could do this. He — and it very much pains my hurty places to say this — alone could fix this.
(Dirty little secret: When I’m fucking procrastinating my newsfucking, I goof off with a Roblox game called Tiny Tanks. It actually offers some interesting strategic lessons. One being that a single aggressive player can absolutely turn an entire game around. That’s what FDR did on several fronts. That’s what we lack.)
There’s no Democrat whose approach at this moment enables them to do this.
Because no matter how aggressively you support green initiatives, you’re still part of the system if that’s all you do. If you won’t call out the bad guys, companies, execs and lawmakers, you’re still defending the system.
If you really cared about people getting hurt, why would you settle for merely trying to mitigate the harm? Why wouldn’t you shut down the people and systems hurting them?
This is why Democrats don’t get heard or believed or trusted on climate. Their inchoate fear of the principal reads as / is inherent institutionalism. Why wouldn’t people see their refusal to treat oil like an existential threat as proof they’re just shilling for renewables?
Look at Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), one of the few leaders willing to test the boundaries of what’s acceptable rhetoric. She recently made the classic “but” mistake. “But” is a word the media can hear. So when she says murdering a health-insurance executive is wrong but so is health insurance, she gets pushed back into her institutionalist cage.
This shouldn’t be hard messaging — if you’re willing to make enemies. “Yes, and” is a cliche by now, but and Warren could have used it: “Yes, the killing of Brian Thompson was a moral obscenity, reprehensible and indefensible, creating heartache for his family and loved ones without doing a thing to dismantle a system that enriches a handful by killing thousands, which Congress could undo in a week just by letting everyone sign up for Medicare if they want to.” (Okay, I’m fan-ficing a bit, but you get the point.)
But And the point is that just because don’t have a non-Trump Trump doesn’t mean we can’t. Like, tomorrow.
People are starving for meaning. They’re dying for collective action. For BIG things.
We need political leaders — Democrats or otherwise, I truly don’t give a shit — to pick up this flag.
Call for protests.
Show up at and shame every museum or college that has an Exxon name on its halls or a Mobil name on its board.
Attribute extreme-weather death tolls to specific companies and executives.
Make enemies.
Be laughed at.
Because in media and in politics, persisting in the face of laughter eventually wins you respect and then wins you zealots.
As union leader Nicholas Klein said in 1918, “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”
Here are just some of the stories, good news and bad, that I never got to in the newsletter, if anyone doubts that there’s something media and political leaders could use every single goddamn hottening day to keep climate change top of mind for everyone.
Dec. 12, NY Times: Ocean heat wiped out half an Alaskan seabird population
Dec. 12, Washington Post: California approves $1.4 billion plan for car chargers
Dec. 11, Grist: Extreme heat is forcing workers into dangerous overnight shifts
Dec. 10, Grist: Study casts doubt on tactical value of fear and “tipping points” to motivate climate-change fight
Nov. 21, NY Times: Automakers beg Trump to KEEP rules forcing them to make EVs
Nov. 21, The Hill: Renewables industries forecast to grow even in shadow of Trump
Nov. 18, NY Times: Nations not meeting emissions goals, targets increasingly out of reach, world fucked
Nov. 18, New Republic: Jumping on every steaming MAGA poop distracts us from fighting climate change
Nov. 11, Axios: The climate change (that we said was too expensive to prevent) cost the world $2 trillion in the past decade
Nov. 11, Washington Post: COP29 conference happened (without anyone making enemies)
Nov. 10, Washington Post: Fossil fuels booming around the world
Oct. 31, Salon: Greenhouse gas emissions are increasing faster than ever, like, ever
Aug. 20, Salon: Say buh-bye to bumblees
If you’re not seeing anyone else push back like this on Democratic defeatism, please consider supporting TFN by becoming a donor or paid subscriber.
Yet.
Yet.
The news we need.
I've rallied, marched, advocated for, and donated lots of $$$ for environmental causes over the last 25 years. Along with millions of others. There were good times during the Obama years, then 4 years of backsliding. Biden did a lot of good things, but now another 4 years of worse backsliding is on the way. There just isn't enough leaders with strong enough spines to stand up to oil...worldwide. Our oil addiction will be our demise...I fear. I'll march on anyway...